There are many ways to home educate, our souls bloomed as we organically developed a nature-based, holistic style. We knew instantly that we had found the right fit for our family. Although we consider ourselves eclectic, this is the base for which we model everything we do.
What is Holistic Education?
Holistic education nurtures the healthy development of the whole child – mind, body, and spirit.
It is welcoming of individual paces and experiences, encouraging a positive self-worth and growth mindset by assisting children to discover confidence and resilience within themselves while adapting emotional regulation. It aims to help children develop into their best selves while supporting and respecting their interests, who they are and want to be.
There is focus on each child’s identity being drawn from the relationships they make through the community and the natural world, provoking humanitarian values to look after one another, animals, and the environment. Being outdoors and incorporating nature within the education journey builds on this connection that we all share this planet and respect for our mother Earth.
This form of education is hands-on, sensory, creative, and ultimately is living mindfully. It is inclusive of a child’s right to learn through play and explore while involving them in the teaching/learning process and acknowledges care to all complex parts of a being measuring the result of who they are, not just the mind in academics. After all, the mind cannot thrive if our body and spirit are not cared for as well.
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” – Aristotle
One of my personal favourite aspects of a nature-based holistic education is that it is very eco-friendly. There is a focus on looking for natural alternatives to plastic products and reusing. Through this mindset, we can hardness solution-based thinking to create our own resources that align with our seasonal rhythm and topics of interest.
Through the ideals that a holistic education and lifestyle delivers, I have personally felt the benefits in my own wellbeing journey over the years, through a rewilding process that I can only describe as feeling like my inner child reconnected to an old familiar friend. A friend that was always there with me, but I lost contact with while I was pulled away and lead down a different path in my adolescence. This path I found myself on again, with my children, a simpler and happier way of life with each tread. A deeper understanding of the nurturing the Earth provides. A deeper understanding of myself.
Therapeutic and fulfilling, there are as many benefits to the adult, as there is to the child.
My heart and soul beam in euphoria to see my children develop and deepen their bond to the natural world, with nothing in their education to steer them away from feeling attuned to nature in such a way that all humans once felt, long ago. To feel to the core of their being, that all life is connected in such a complex and beautiful way. Knowing that Earth provides us with everything we could ever need.
The material is just the material.
